What happens when you do a mind dump?

Do you find on certain days you can’t be productive, no matter what you try? What if there was one simple solution to the spinning gears in your head, the lost productivity, and the hectic day? I believe doing this one thing, at least a couple of times a week (if not daily), will change your life and dramatically improve your productivity. A simple mind dump can make all the difference.

Our Days and Lives are Crazy Busy

I hate it when I lie in bed at night and have hundreds of thoughts running through my head. The kids are asleep, I watched my show, and finished reading my book, I’m ready to close my eyes. Except as soon as I do, I remember I need to make a phone call, schedule a meeting, send an email, or do some other task. My mind feels like a stationary bike, all these ideas spinning around and I’m not getting anywhere. There’s no way I’m going to sleep.

Have you ever experienced this? Or maybe, sitting at work you get an email from a customer or your boss and discover the deadline for your project has been cut by several days. With this new deadline and all the other items you need to complete, hundreds of thoughts run through your head and you can’t make your next move. Now there are so many tasks that need to get done that you can’t figure out how to even begin. As you sit at your desk, the nagging feeling won’t go away. You realize you haven’t made any progress and the deadline is looming.

Being Productive is Difficult

Whether you’re lying in bed or sitting at your desk, sometimes it is an enormous challenge to get work done or to take the next step. It’s hard to know where to start. We have ideas about work, about our spouse, kids, friends, family, and a host of other things spinning around in that brain of ours. When this happens, instead of getting busy working hard and being productive, we get bogged down.

Try this. Stop for a moment and close your eyes, really, give it a try. Close your eyes and go through the list of items you need to tackle today. If you’re like most people, your list is pretty long and may seem a little crazy!

When our to-do list gets too long, we begin to lose our ability to be productive and efficient. No matter where you are or how busy you are, this simple mind dump exercise will improve your productivity. Let’s take it one step further.

Get Productive by Doing a Mind Dump

Let’s go back to that list. Close your eyes again and pull up your mental list. After you have your mental list, grab a pen and paper or open a word doc. It doesn’t really matter where you put the info, just pick a spot. Okay, now that you are ready, do a mind dump. Get it all out.

Take the list you have in your mind and dump it onto the paper. Let each item fall out of your mind as you write it. Release it from your mind. Imagine all those tasks transferring out of your mind, falling onto the paper, and sticking there.

Now that you have a little less clutter, do it again. Let’s get all the hidden tasks, ideas, events, and projects out of your mind. Keep doing this until you don’t have that stationary bicycle feeling anymore.

After you do this, I guarantee you will be clearheaded. Finally, you can wisely and efficiently tackle the items you wrote down. And your productivity and efficiency will dramatically improve.

This Seems Too Simple – But it Works

The solution is simple. Take the craziness and busyness of your day or week and let it fall out of your mind. Getting the craziness and busyness into a different space will free you to work on it instead of it working on you.

Once you release the burden of all these items from your mind, you are free to tackle them in the appropriate order. You have control again. With a daily mind dump like this, now you choose what gets your attention instead of it choosing you.

Comment below to let us know what happened after you did your mind dump. Were you more clearheaded? Did you feel a weight was lifted? Did you find that you could now prioritize your tasks and actually get things done?